


Exigent

by JoAsakura



Series: Sunbreaker: The Book of Mouse [3]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-26 01:10:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16209524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: During the fall of the City to the Red Legion, Mouse confronts some ghosts of his past.





	Exigent

Mouse blinked awake, sheets soft against bare skin and the light heavy and golden through the blinds. Gerion reached over and pushed a messy strand of purple hair out of Mouse’s face and smiled.

“Morning, you,” he said, hand coming to rest on Mouse’s cheek. The other Titan closed his eyes again for a moment and leaned into the warmth of the touch. Guardian hands were always soft- callouses and scars didn’t stand a chance against so many repeated healings and rezzes- and Gerion was so warm for someone who never met a solar power he liked.

There was a creeping cold dread in Mouse’s belly and he burrowed a little closer. “I had a hell of a nightmare,” he mumbled against Gerion’s big hand. “You were dead, like _dead-dead_. I was next. And the Light…” he paused, searching Gerion’s grey eyes. “The Light was gone.”

Gerion threaded his fingers through Mouse’s hair. “Oh, babe. That wasn’t a dream.”

Mouse wheezed awake in the dark and the cold and there was ash and blood in his nose. There was the heavy, repeated boom of mortar. He tried to sit up and Gerion was there, crouched beside him in an undersuit and heavy boots, grey eyes serious. “Mouse, baby, you gotta get up.”

Panicked, Mouse started to look around, and Gerion touched his face. “No, no, look at me, look at me. You’re critically injured, the city is overrun with Cabal, and something’s happened to the Light.”

“And I’m seeing a dead man,” Mouse whispered, trying to focus his eyes.

“You’re doing that weird Awoken disassociating thing pretty hard. I’m the part of your brain that isn’t freaking out,” Gerion smiled gently. The sound of mortar was drawn out into a single bass note, the ash filling the air frozen in mid-fall. Mouse started to look around, and Gerion drew his face forward again. “Look at me, baby, ok?”

“What don’t you want me to see?” He asked, looking at the firelight highlighting the sharp coppery planes of the other man’s face.

“You’ll know soon enough. Here’s the damage report: you have what I think is a skull fracture, your left arm is broken and your leg is too. At least three broken ribs and a bullet hole in your right shoulder,” Gerion ticked off. “I don’t know what Cabal unit is swarming the city, because you don’t.”

“Stel?”

“I don’t know where he is,” Gerion touched his face again. “What do you remember?”

“I just got back from a six week detail on Venus,” Mouse started. He looked over to see himself and Stel. His armour was back in its storage and he was putting a jacket on over his undersuit. “Stel loves pizza. He loves the smell, he was all excited for us to go get one.”

_Stel is near the window as the thunder growls overhead. “Mouse? What’s that? Are those… are those Cabal ships?”_

_In the next moment, the Tower erupts into orange flames lighting up the storm-grey walls. Mouse, the version of himself in this memory, grabs the emergency sidearm from by the door and darts out into the stairwell, slapping the fire alarm. He spins, in mid motion to run back and take an armoursuit ,_ _when the building shatters around him._

_Stel rezzes him on a rooftop a mile down._

_At ground level, streets are in chaos as civilians try to flee for the emergency tunnels far beneath from the relentless grind of Cabal war machines. No time to find stairs, and he drops out of the sky like a burning angel, the massive flaming maul in his hands destroying the first tank on impact._

_Barrier bright crystal as he blocks one street to hold off another group of Legionaries, and he picks off one, two, three Cabal, with the sidearm snapping in his hands. Super is back up in a moment, fueled by the death around him and without the armoursuit, the fire feels like a lover against his skin. The street is erupting into columns of fire, and he swings around to take the head off a centurion when._

_It all goes white and then dark, and as everything feels like his spine has been ripped out, the bullet hits him and staggers him back. There’s no time to find his feet as the phalanx shield crushes his arm, just to scream to Stel to run_.

Gerion looked at the scene, then back at Mouse. “Ok, you need a plan.”

“A plan?” Mouse asked dumbly. He started to look around again and Gerion gently redirected him.

“You’re beautiful and you’re smart and you’re hell on wheels in a fight baby- and I’m not just saying that because I’m a hallucination- but you suck at tactical decisions, which is why I’m showing up in your brain,” the other Titan said. “So. One: you need to find Stel. Two: you need to get somewhere safe. Three: the City is burning and you have no powers. Try to find Shaxx or the Vanguard. Anyone. You can’t do this alone, and I can’t help you any more than this.”

“Geri… I’m so sorry,” Mouse reached for him, then let his hand fall, knowing it wouldn’t connect with living skin. “If I hadn’t…”

“Twilight Gap’s been over a long time, Mouse,” Gerion stood and beckoned Mouse to do the same. “Eyes up, Guardian. Still got a million miles to go today before you sleep.”  
  
Time seemed to restart and Mouse was alone in a drainage ditch, staring up at the smoke-filled sky. Alone except for the pile of bodies he was a part of. Civilians mostly, but he saw the peek of a warlock’s coat and a hunter’s cape and he staggered away from it, the smell of ash and death and stagnant water thick in his nose. Grey morning light bleached every bit of colour from them and the enormity of what happened hit him like a train. He’d failed, they’d all failed, to protect the City and her people.

He threw up without warning, despair and vertigo combined. A big black crow paused at picking at a corpse, and fixed him with one golden eye as Mouse wiped at his mouth with a bloodied sleeve. “What,” he mumbled and the bird flapped over in front of him with a caw.

“Go away,” Mouse picked up a rock with his good hand and considered its usefulness as a weapon. The bird hopped over to him and cawed again before fluttering downstream a bit. Mouse just stared at it, then it flapped back, clearly irritated. He chucked the rock at it with a hoarse shout, and watched it pass through the bird to land in the water with a splat.

“Traveler’s Crack, you’re a hallucination, too,” he sank to his knees miserably as the bird very sarcastically hopped a few inches then back to get him to follow. ( _Find Stel, Get somewhere safe_.) Mouse looked back at the bodies. ( _Get up Guardian, fight for the lost, fight for the Light. Find a weapon and go down swinging for your god_ ).

The bird hopped around to his field of view and bleated a caw in his face, yellow eyes narrowed. “Right, don’t look. Stay on task,” he groaned, dragging himself upright. “Why a fucking crow?

( _Bevan Tar, you are the most infuriating creature I have ever met_ ,) an old echo whispered in the back of his broken skull and he leaned against a column, lungs stabbing with pain.

“I don’t mean to be,” he said out loud to the bird, stumbling forward again. “I’m sorry. Did I get you killed too?”

(… _things die_ ,) the bird seemed to say with a shrug, then circled around a pile of rock and metal. (… _things grow. I’m going to help you, Bevan_.)

Mouse pawed at the rubble until he found Stel, the ghost’s cheery pink and green shell battered and crushed. “Stel?” Mouse rasped, sitting down hard in the filthy water. He cradled Stel against his chest while the crow preened. “ _Stellamaris_ , eyes up, Ghost, come on, please?”

Stel’s glowing blue screen sputtered. “M. Mou. Mouse-s-s? YoU FOuNd Me? H..how?” His voice was staticky, stuttering, and bits of his shell scraped as he tried to hover and failed.

Mouse looked back to where Gerion had been, to where the crow had been. “I had some help,” he said, curling around Stel’s broken frame. “I had help. Let’s find somewhere safe.”

 


End file.
